Sports Participation in Schools
Lord Caine Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, on school playing fields, there is a policy only to permit; the Secretary of State has to give consent. There is a variety of circumstances in which the policy allows playing fields to be sold, but there is a recommended allocation which every school should have, and the department benefits from the advice of the School Playing Fields Advisory Panel on any suggestion. But the policy is to retain land within the school estate wherever possible.
Lord Caine (Con)
My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register. In my part of the country, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and across the whole of the north of England, rugby league plays a huge role in communities. But for most young people, especially those from less well-off backgrounds, entry into the sport is predominantly through schools. Can my noble friend therefore assure me that support for rugby league in schools remains a priority for the Government?
Baroness Berridge (Con)
In the School Sport and Activity Action Plan, flexibility is given to schools to deliver what is appropriate for their communities. To develop that plan, which will be updated this year, we have a forum where the department takes advice. I can assure my noble friend that the Rugby Football League is part of that forum and makes its views clear to the department.
National Curriculum
Lord Caine Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, the value of history in helping us to understand today and to learn from the past is one of the purposes of educating children. The only compulsory element on the national curriculum is the study of the Holocaust but, of course, that leads to teachers being able to talk about wider discrimination and prejudice to avoid such events happening again.
Lord Caine (Con)
My Lords, I strongly support a curriculum that reflects our diverse history and teaches children our national story, warts and all. But does my noble friend agree that it is profoundly unhistorical to teach and interpret the past entirely through the prism of today’s values, and it is wrong to demonise figures from history simply because they held views which, at the time, were the norm in society?
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, history, of course, is not just events—history can be that of values, principles and mores. I agree with the noble Lord, who I am sure will be reassured that the guidance sent out by DCMS on the controversial issue of statues is to consider those figures in their context and contextualise the involvement of that person in our history.
Schools and Colleges: Qualification Results and Full Opening
Lord Caine Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, forgive me; the noble Lord, Lord Storey, also asked about the attainment gap. At the moment the department is seeking as quickly as possible an assessment of what education has been lost and the effect on the attainment gap. We appreciate the EEF’s work, and there have been other reports. There is a procurement out at the moment so that we can assess not all pupils, obviously, but get a better base as to what has actually happened, allowing the next few weeks for things to settle down in schools. Teachers will be assessing that at the moment.
Independent schools are very keen to engage. I personally have been engaging with them through the Independent Schools Council and the Boarding Schools’ Association. They offered some summer clubs over the school holidays, but in my next meeting with them I will take to them how we can structure more their desire to help.
Lord Caine (Con)
My Lords, given that examinations are by their very nature socially distanced and that most schools broke just before the exam period, some of us wonder whether the wholesale cancellation of all exams was absolutely necessary. On postponing next year, the Schools Minister yesterday highlighted the need to consult the devolved Administrations. What formal structures are being considered to ensure that in future there is a properly co-ordinated approach to these matters across the whole of our United Kingdom?
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, on the cancellation of exams, I think we need to cast our minds back. At the time exams were due to start, no secondary school pupils had been back in the building and the confidence was not there among parents. I hate to think of the trauma we could have caused by children going straight from lockdown into an invigilated situation. It just was not possible, and the department was commended on a decisive decision at that moment that exams were cancelled. So, with the best will in the world, that was the right decision and we stand by it.
On communication with the four nations, only yesterday officials were in a four-nations meeting. There is regular dialogue at both ministerial and official level with the four nations. For instance, the direction letters sent by the Secretary of State to Ofqual were copied to each of his three counterparts in the nations. We are working closely. It is unfortunate for all young people that none of the four nations managed to deliver the standardisation that we had intended to deliver and believed was best for children.
Education Settings: Wider Opening
Lord Caine Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge
My Lords, it is a great regret that the scientific evidence on social distances does not allow us to achieve our ambition of getting all primary schoolchildren back before the summer. However, as I say, more vulnerable children are in school. We have also acted with specific initiatives on behalf of, for instance, those transitioning from alternative provision at 16. We recognise the risk that they could drop through the net, so we have announced £750 per year 11 pupil in alternative provision. We are obviously aware that it is unprecedented to be in the Department for Education at a time when we had to close schools. There is urgency and a plan to catch up for those children.
Lord Caine (Con) [V]
My Lords, I endorse the wise words of my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking. As the product of a state comprehensive school in a predominantly working-class part of Leeds, I need no lessons on the importance of tackling educational inequalities. Does my noble friend agree that the longer schools remain closed, the more difficult this will be to achieve and that those who suffer most will be from less well-off backgrounds? Is it not about time that the leadership of some of the teaching unions adopted a more constructive, responsible and sensible approach to these matters?
Baroness Berridge
I am grateful to the noble Lord and, as someone who is also the product of state education, I know that there will be children falling behind because their education is not offered in schools at the moment. Away from what I might call the bluster of the headlines, I am aware of many teachers who are getting on with their job and have been planning to reopen. Along with the Department for Education, they long for the situation—and for the scientific evidence—to be such that we can welcome all our students back into school. In addition to the remote learning I outlined, there are tales of teachers dropping worksheets at the door for students. They are acutely aware of the disadvantage to those students, and we will work together with teachers on the front line and all support staff to help them catch up.